I think like a lot of us I also collect other coin related items, for me, it is especially literature. I found these in a local antique mall and had to buy them. They are glass slides a little larger than trading cards (sorry, forgot to measure them). One of them says clearly "greek coins" which goes with my collecting interests. Does anyone have any experience with these? This guy had a whole box of these slides although the 5 I purchased appeared to be the only ones that had coins as a subject matter. Most of them were sculptures or some other antiquity. My first thought was that these are the inventory photos for a museum but that is purely a guess. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Very interesting. According to the Acacia Fraternity publication in 1906, This person who apparently shot the photographs, D. M. Horkmans, was the University photographer at Lawrence, Kansas. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...wA3oECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=D.M. horkmans&f=false He was also the newly elected Master of Mason's Lawrence Lodge 6. There seems to be lots about him on the Internet. I would keep those cards. They are so nice looking. If they were inexpensive, I might grab up others. But i'm glad you got all the coin related ones. Nice find! Happy New Year!
Many of those look like intaglios, not coins. At least two are clearly coins. I found this card catalog entry: http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrl...cation.xml;route=ksrlead;brand=ksrlead;query= "Collection of Lantern Slides for the History of Education and Mathematics. Dates: 1900-[193-?] / This collection consists of 500 plus lantern slides that were once used as visual aids for teaching the history of education and mathematics." My guess is that you have purchased part of that set of "lantern slides".
Thank you both. That is more than I had come up with. Makes me wonder if I should have just bought all of them. They are all in excellent condition.
Very cool items. I wonder if they are British Museum plates, or plates from "Principal Coins of the Greeks" or other publication from the time? Maybe @ab initio might know ? John
Well, I have decided that these are neat enough that I am going to go back and get the rest, even though the rest are not numismatic related. The history nut in me can't resist.
There was a related thread on these some time back (though I dont recall if they were the same company). Search through the archives. I remember them being some sort of education aid from roughly 100 years back or so.
Good news. My understanding wife went back today to purchase the rest of the slides. To my surprise, there were 4 more slides with coins that I had missed the first time through. There were a total of 93 slides. I'm not certain what I will do with the rest of them. At the very least I have a lot of research to do before I make a decision.
That's indeed a very neat acquisition! Lantern slides like this were very popular in the academic teaching of art history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They worked a little bit like later photographic slides or today's PowerPoint presentations. My guess is that you picked up part of an art history professor's or department's deacquisitioned slide collection. Just to illustrate, here is a 19th c. British advertisement for a magic lantern:
I once collected photo-antiques and may still have a later, electric, projector in the attic but I last saw it 17 years ago when we moved and really don't remember what we did with it. These glass slides were the forerunners of 35mm color slides and of popular use for lectures. I would value the slides according to the quality of photography and whether they were photos of coins or of plaster casts which was common it the day. They could also be copied from book plates. Such items would be used for a lecture at an art museum or college that probably drew a larger crowd than you would imagine. They come from a day when intelligence was valued over athletic skills or political rhetoric. I would love to own high quality actual photos of actual coins (not copied from book plates) from that period but the number of such items and the space they take makes the value about what you get recycling the silver in them. This seems a place to show my photo from the mid-late 1850's showing a still life arrangement including a bracelet made of antoniniani (my guess is Postumus). The stereo card is French. It is the oldest photo of ancient coins I have seen and I would appreciate hearing of others of that period.
@Chris B - reviving this thread with your interesting find - the hand written notes make your slides particularly interesting. I have about 75 similar slides, mostly a Greek & Roman coin collection with a few maps and monuments and book plates. Did you find an interesting use for them? Pulling these off the shelf today, I also found this reference online which has plates that are also on my slides - which at least suggests to me a date somewhere near 1923. Here are a couple of slides of coins or plaster casts:
